Thursday, October 14, 2010

BEIJING -- A group of eminent Chinese Communist elders has issued a bold call to end the country's wide-ranging restrictions on free speech... In an open letter posted online, the retired officials state that although China's 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the right is constrained by a host of laws and regulations that should be scrapped.

"This kind of false democracy of affirming in principle and denying in actuality is a scandal in the history of democracy," said the letter, dated Monday and widely distributed by e-mail.

"We want to spur action toward governing the country according to law," said Wang Yongcheng, a retired professor at Shanghai's Jiaotong University, in a telephone interview. "If the constitution is violated, the government will lack legitimacy. The people must assert and exercise their legitimate rights."

The 23 signatories to the letter include Li Rui, the former secretary to revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, and other retired high officials in state media and the propaganda apparatus who were once themselves responsible for enforcing strict censorship.

In a stunning and historic turnabout, it appears that having taken a giant bite out of the once-forbidden fruit called democracy, prominent former members of the Communist regime have acquired a taste for the sweet freedoms that go along with it.

Yes, this is the same People's Republic of China (PRC) responsible for the atrocious June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre that killed as many as thousands of innocent protesters for attempting to exercise their freedom of speech.

The same PRC that still employs a brutal, Soviet-style Gulag system that imprisons "dissidents" for daring to speak out against its leaders and their oppressive policies -- a Gulag system implemented by Mao Zedong that purportedly continues the practice of harvesting bodily organs from inmates for sale on the Black Market. The same Mao Zedong who sought to destroy the traditional Chinese family system because it "was inherently subversive to the collective Communist utopia"

The same PRC that has recently embarked on an ambitious and massive expansion of its economy (currently ranked 2nd only behind the US) as well as its military might (China has the largest manned army in the world).

It's also the same PRC that, under penalty of arrest and imprisonment, states these odorous "rules" for journalistic free speech:

Those acting as journalists agree to observe 'journalistic ethics' and to not distort facts, fabricate rumors, or carry out news coverage by 'foul means'. Journalists also agree to not engage in activities which are incompatible with unity or community and 'public interests'.

Hmm. Where have I heard that before?

Barack Obama in the October 15, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone magazine:

The golden age of an objective press was a pretty narrow span of time in our history. Before that, you had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition. It is part of a tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It's a point of view that I disagree with. It's a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world.

Who will ever forget during the last State of the Union address when Obama, incensed because the Supreme Court had dared to rule against him on disclosure as it pertains to campaign finance and free speech, dressed down the dressed-in-black men and women with these scathing words:

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'm urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.

To which equally-incensed Justice Samuel Alito so famously reponded by mouthing the words "not true."

It was a shocking and first-of-its-kind moment for the entire nation. Obama, on national TV no less, crossed the invisible line of separation of powers to scold SCOTUS for upholding the Constitution in affirming all Americans' rights to express themselves freely during elections without restriction or unwarranted scrutiny from interested parties and powers that be.

You'll recall, to a person, the howling-hyena Democrats stood and boisterously cheered Obama's remarks, as the seething, stone-faced Justices sat silently, even respectfully.

[Alito] deserved to be criticized. If he didn't like it he can mouth whatever they want. These Supreme Court justices sometimes forget that we live in the real world. They got a real world reminder tonight. If you make a boneheaded decision, someone's going to call you out on it.

Spoken like a true gangster. Al Capone couldn't have said it any better.

And call them out Obama did -- Chicago style -- to serve as an example for what anyone who dares cross him can expect -- if not worse.

Sadly, this is what America has become under this current regime. Keep your mouth shut, play ball, or suffer the consequences.

Obama is no stranger to strong-arm tactics. Recently, while giving a speech in Elko, Nevada, Obama exhorted his faithful throng of true-believers:

I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.

And if the faithful can't convince the enemy by "getting in their face", they can always stand outside polling places across America come November 2nd, dressed in military garb, wielding billy clubs and menace the voters attempting to enter the polls. If one method doesn't get the job done with this regime, the other works just fine, too -- especially with the knowledge that AG Eric Holder and Obama's hand-picked abettors at the DOJ will turn a conveniently blind eye.

And then there's this...

Taking their cue directly from Obama, even the activist judiciary left has gotten into the act. In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce "warned" citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone (read "conservatives") who made statements against Obama that were "false".

All in a day's work for the speech-stifling, jackbooted Marxists.

The "Fairness Doctrine", "Card Check" and, most recently, the "DISCLOSE Act" are even more suffocative examples of Obama and congressional Democrats' design on smothering speech with which they disagree, or perhaps more accurately, which disagrees with them.

Currently, it's the failure of the Senate to pass the ironically-named DISCLOSE Act -- which calls for independent groups running TV and radio ads to identify the ad's funding sources -- that has drawn Obama's bulls-eye.

Last Sunday, David Axelrod, a top Obama lieutenant, attacked a defenseless US Chamber of Commerce for supposedly financially supporting industry-friendly Republican candidates over their industry-bashing Democratic rivals with foreign money on CBS's Face the Nation:

Secret political donations to the Chamber and other groups pose a threat to our democracy.

And then there was White House mouthpiece Josh Earnest, while acknowledging that the White House had no proof that the Chamber was using foreign contributions to fund election ads, added:

[The President] is just saying for the good of democracy the Chamber should disclose where it is getting its money and how it is financing these ads.

Not to be outdone, Vice President Joe Biden, while giving a speech in Scranton, PA, challenged the Chamber this way:

[The Chamber should] tell us how much of the money they're investing is from foreign sources. I challenge them. If I'm wrong, I stand corrected. But show me. Show, me. Folks, they're trying to buy this election to go back to exactly what they did before.

All options are on the table with this cabal when it comes to the First Amendment and political dissent -- threats, intimidation, physical violence, and yes, even imprisonment.

Isn't it sadly ironic that on a day that one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet calls for greater freedom of speech, that the leader of the nation that invented the notion seems hell-bent on destroying it?

Isn't it also ironic that it was Barack Obama himself who once proclaimed:

Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

1 comment:

This is an exhaustive blog post that really gets to the heart of one of the most disturbing aspects of Obama's agenda.

He and his speechwriters are directly referencing a lot of the worst elements of leftist politics. Many of them are inspired by some of the most ruthless leaders and thinkers of the left, and it really shows in this case.